


How to Ruin a Celebration

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Horrible family gatherings, Smoke Knights - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Seven ways for parties to go horribly wrong, starring Andronicus Valois and his descendants. After all, there's more to successful social event than throwing money at the caterers.Written for GG Event Week 2020.
Comments: 39
Kudos: 33





	1. Exploding cake

## 1\. Exploding cake

"I wanted cake. S'posed to be cake." 

Sniffling wasn't going to help the girl and she'd have to learn that sooner or later, but she was four, and she had just watched the three-tier rose-encrusted confection from Pierre's, which was in Nila's professional opinion not as good as its reputation but still perfectly adequate for a child's party, explode and deposit shrapnel across an unsettling area of garden. If Nila had been a little slower on her feet the girl would be bleeding all over the lawn. Or in pieces. She slapped a hand over the girls' mouth. "The cake is gone. You don't get caOOOOOOW," escaped her before she could choke it back to silence, because Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard, age four and zero days, had just chomped down on the ball of Nila's thumb with her very sharp baby teeth. 

Useful instinct, bad target. "Shut it," Nila hissed. "Do you want them to know where we are?" 

The girl went still in her arms at that. 

Good. Nila glanced down at the chaos below. The tulip tree wasn't exactly a _good_ hiding place, not for more than a minute or two, but a minute or two was plenty for some more obvious, threatening guards to turn up. The big table had, somehow, withstood the blast; the striped-trousered legs of a waiter twitched from behind the fountain, which was making a painful grinding noise as if some vital piece of pumping machinery had been knocked out of gear. Assorted small children in frilly pastel outfits screamed at the sky. Madame Sainte-Honore was screaming at another waiter, who patted weakly at his frosted chest as if he weren't sure if there was blood there and paid her no attention whatsoever. And Martellus had vanished. At least one person had some sense. 

Nila let herself relax a fraction. "If you make any noise the assassins will hear you and shoot you with a poison dart," she added, just in case. 

The girl seemed to consider this for a few seconds. Then she said, with the supercilious air available only to small children and tenured professors, "No they won't. You're stupid." 

"And what makes you think that, little girl?" They didn't pay her enough to babysit. It was hard enough keeping an adult alive, someone sensible and able to follow orders in an emergency, someone who might even have finished their own anti-poison training so if you happened to forget your twiddle sticks they wouldn't die, even if they noticed the odd taste and wrote your supervisor a very scathing letter and you wound up reassigned to someone who shouldn't have gotten anyone _that_ annoyed yet. 

Even if she was making a very sound attempt with her own bodyguard. "'Cause if they have blowguns they'd just have shot us all. Zip! Pow!" She inexplicably seemed to find this prospect cheery, and stopped kicking Nila's shins with the hard little heels of her cute blue boots in favour of tugging at the ribbon in her hair. 

Right. Just go quiet and wait for the screaming to stop, that was a good plan. 

Below them Martellus strode in between the topiary knights, somehow clean of frosting for all that he'd been standing right beside the cake when it exploded, followed by six men even taller and more imposing than he was in gilt armour and looking more like a furious Spark on the rampage than a teenage boy at his kid sister's birthday party. It occurred to Nila that the two were not mutually exclusive. She tuned out his furious yelling right until it got to, "And if she's been kidnapped I will personally turn the responsible parties into gerbils and _crush their tiny skulls_!" 

"I'm right here!" Seffie somehow proclaimed in a shriek with no warmup, and twisted herself out of Nila's grip like a greased stoat to tumble out of the tree. 

Maybe she should just retire in disgrace. It would simplify things. 

"Seffie!" Martellus didn't even bother to pretend to tell her off, just let her launch himself into her big brother's arms and wrap herself around him. He looked only slightly less imposing with a little girl tucked under his chin. "You're not hurt?" 

"Nnnnope." The girl pulled back just long enough to look at the wreckage. "But I didn't get any cake. I want cake." 

"We can get a new one for tea. And I'll have Veilchen test it for poison." The look Martellus sent up into the tree, where he should absolutely not have been able tell where Nila was hiding even knowing where Seffie had dropped from, wasn't even a poisonous glare, just the disappointed, simmering equivalent of an eyeroll. 

Someone must have tended to the twitching waiter behind the fountain; he'd stopped twitching, at least. One of the gilt-armoured guards was looming over Madame Sainte-Honore, ignoring the way she kept prodding his chin with the tip of her parasol. The others were examining the fondant-encrusted remains of the explosive device, herding the guests away, or testing the bloodier guests for a pulse. 

Nila didn't even see the flash of purple as Veilchen landed on the next branch. It was impossible to tell his expression behind that stupid scarf he always wore, but as their blades slid silently together his eyebrows went up, as if he honestly hadn't expected her to parry. Then he rolled his eyes, gave an apologetic half-shrug, and vanished again. 

\--

Right. Time to quit and become a travelling juggler. There were plenty of more respectable circuses than this in the world. She could even juggle knives.


	2. Be unfashionably late

## 2\. Be unfashionably late 

Normally Andronicus would have gone to his own bed by now, but there was a blizzard outside, the inn had stone walls and ill-fitting glass windows, and the innkeeper had furs on her bed and a very welcoming bosom. There were worse ways to spend a night on the road than in the arms of a handsome matron. She yawned, which made her chest do interesting things where it was pressed tight to his, and threw her leg over his hip. "Such a nice young man." 

He couldn't help but chuckle. "Lucky I stopped here." 

The next gust of wind made the sort of rattling noise that set his teeth on edge. He had no real fear that the inn would collapse - the stone was rough and cold and crude, but the walls could have withstood a battering ram - but the noise reminded him of too many bumpy coach rides. When he was king, Andronicus thought, he'd have to start improving the roads. The old Romans had managed not to get potholes, or loose cobblestones to every passing heavy goods wagon. Surely there was some Thinkomancer who was as smart as the old Romans. 

"Very lucky. You might have to spend the week." The innkeeper snorted. "Or give up and go back. What's so important in Wildbad you couldn't wait until spring, anyway?" 

"A wedding." He half-shrugged, pulling the fur over their heads. Maybe it would muffle the howling. "We wasted all autumn negotiating terms. Wait until spring and they'll start wanting the Vosges County back." The woman had a point; the wedding had been put together in unseemly haste, with barely time for Andronicus and twenty men-at-arms, servants, and hangers-on to travel east. It would mean spending all winter in the depths of the Black Forest, in a castle whose heating system had never even heard of hypocausts, but he could bring poor Rothaid back to decent weather in Provance soon enough. Worse things had been done in the name of strategic alliances. 

And he needed this alliance. He did. Andronicus planned to be King of more than a dozen squabbling counties pretending to bow to Paris in a desperate attempt to look like something that could stand up against the Queen over the Sea - they knew she wouldn't be distracted with her sinking island forever. And off to the east, the Heterodynes had started raiding again. Already there had been Jägers going through villages as far as the Danube. Andronicus was fairly sure he could convince the petty kings of the Germanies to band together, if the alternative was Clemouthious Heterodyne. People shivered at the name of the Heterodyne. But if they were to band together with Andronicus at their head, he had to make a show of good faith. 

For example, marrying a woman who was related to two-thirds of them through her mother and whose father was friends with a quarter, but who was ten years his senior, unmarried at twenty-eight, and very possibly a wizard. They'd been cagey about it. Devoted to her studies, they said. A penetrating mind, they said. The explosions were only because of a new silver mine and anyone who said otherwise was spreading scurrilous slander, they said. Who had ever heard of a thinkomancer princess? 

He just hoped she didn't pass it on. Who'd ever heard of a wizard king? 

But that was for later, when his reign was over and he'd left some strong son to carry on. For now, Andronicus was a prince waiting for his father's chronic stupidity to turn terminal. Assuming he didn't freeze to death on the way to his own wedding. "I don't think we'll be leaving in any hurry tomorrow," he told the innkeeper. 

"Good. I'm not getting out of this bed until the sun's up." As if to emphasize the point, she rolled on top of him. Her hair was dark and curly, and it tickled as she leaned down to deliver a long, slow lick to his neck. Well. Maybe one more round. The innkeeper stopped, apparently struck by some sudden thought. "Here, is the forest part of the dowry? Am I going to be paying next year's taxes in francs?" 

"No. Wrong side of the river." He slid his hands up her hips, enjoying the soft curves. 

"Hmrph." 

"Has the Elector been mistreating you?" Was he going to have to start off on the wrong foot by having a screaming argument with his father-in-law? The man hadn't shown any signs of responding to diplomacy. 

But the innkeeper sighed as she sat halfway up, drawing the furs with her into an impromptu tent, the better to reach down and - oooh. She was good with her hands. "I don't believe he knows we exist. Or else he'd be sending hunting parties. There were bears, last winter," she added, and there was something flat and grim in her voice that almost cancelled out all the interesting touches. "Mostly bears, I ought to say. I don't know what the rest was, or who made them. I've never seen talons that big on a living creature. We didn't dare eat the meat." 

It was, Andronicus wanted to say, probably safe. It was hard enough to make a living creature venomous; he didn't know the Thinkomancer alive who could turn a land-beast poisonous. But he doubted the woman whose bed he was in cared much for the distinction. 

"Maybe we can come back here after Yule," he offered instead. It would endear him to the people who might be his soldiers, one day. "If you get more word of mostly-bears. Do you know someone who can read and write?" 

She snorted. "My own self. Not everyone outside the city is an ignorant hick, you know." 

Fair enough. Andronicus brushed his fingers over her breast. "Send word to Wildbad, and I'll see who wants to go hunting." 

The blizzard stopped three days later, just long enough to ruin the roads. Andronicus cursed as he walked his horse through rutted mud, cursed when one of his attendants slipped fording a stream and broke a leg and had to be carried two miles back to the nearest miserable excuse for a village, cursed at the bleak gray skies and the drooping pine branches and at the sun on what should have been the morning after his wedding. By the time they arrived, late that evening, Rothaid had vanished back into her tower doing something with sulphur no one wanted to interrupt. 

\--


	3. Show Them All

## 3\. Show Them All

"I don't know! Why can't they give us warning about these things? Do they think roast hens grow on trays?" 

"Half of them are Sparks," Tall Marie pointed out, with that infuriating cat-stare that guaranteed she'd never be expected to serve drinks to important guests. "They could probably arrange roast hens dropping out of the sky. If properly motivated." 

"Well, why couldn't the flaming beignet-brains do that instead of this moronic _race_?" Small Marie - she'd tried to be Daisy instead for a while, cheery and exotically English, but somehow Small Marie had stuck - threw her hands in the air and made the kind of face that she only made back-of-stairs, which was why she always got stuck serving drinks. "Aren't there supposed to be, I don't know, political considerations?" 

Tall Marie shrugged. "I expect there's a story behind it. I'll fetch the butler and this can all be his problem." 

Which didn't mean it wasn't their problem too, as soon as the butler emerged far enough from his hangover to start yelling orders, and between setting up the Count's great hall for a fancier feast that they had planned and helping de-organ the supper roast and sending to town for more brandy because the Count's guests didn't know the meaning of moderation, Small Marie managed to miss handing out drinks at the starting line. By the time she got there, there were only sleigh-tracks and hoof prints in the pounded-down snow beneath the gargoyle gate, and ladies chattering as they pulled their furs and shawls tighter, starting to think that they should go back indoors. 

Small Marie looked for Terebithia, which was a habit she should really break before someone noticed her doing it, but there was no sign. 

Two hours before sunset she and Tall Marie and Yvon trooped out to the gargoyle gate with braziers. The Count trooped with them, hands deep in the pockets of his fashionable spring-green overcoat. "You know," he said, as if he couldn't bear not to share the observation with whoever was nearby, "I do believe young Terebithia doesn't like this idea as much as her young man does." 

In front of the Count counted as Above Stairs. Small Marie didn't snort in derision. "An astute observation, sir," she said instead. "Why do you think that?" 

"Because if she really trusted him she wouldn't have joined in, would she? She'd be right here with us ready to greet the winner. Possibly with flowers. I don't know where she always gets flowers from, but you've seen her." Small Marie made a noise of encouragement; it was the unseasonable crown of red hyacinths that had caught her eye, two weeks ago. "And instead whatever poor lad gets back first will have to sit around in the cold waiting for her to turn up late on that fancy swan-sleigh and hand him a ribbon and say she regrets she can't offer her hand without her father's blessing." 

The words he'd said before that finally caught up to Small Marie's mind. She hadn't - but - "She joined the race? Sir," she hastily added. 

The face Tall Marie was making couldn't be classified, because she'd hidden it behind her brazier. 

"Oh yes. Weren't you there? Or, well, here?" The Count waved at the gargoyle gate as they stepped up to it, and idly kicked at the afternoon's fresh inch of snow. "Glided up as neat as you please, said that if it was a horse-race she had a horse, did anyone say the horse couldn't be pulling a sleigh, and that it wouldn't be sporting not to join in with five such fine young men showing their mettle - she went on for a while. And, being besotted fools who think a woman of _our_ family can be won like a gold ring at the fair, they let her. I pity her husband." He stomped, and blew on his hands, while Yvon hurried to pile kindling in the braziers. 

Small Marie, who'd remembered her spark-wheel, got them set alight. It hardly took a minute, and she gave her usual silent thanks. However condescending the Count could be, however loud the butler yelled, however stiff her smile had to be when she was serving drinks, she could carry a spark-wheel here, and Yvon with his tireless brass body carried all the wood. An improvement on home. 

The fields were silent, snow swallowing up the small noises of their rustling coats. Tall Marie had taken up a position beside the lowest gargoyle with her hands clasped neatly in front of her, staring out into the distance. Small Marie tried to drift into the lee of Yvon. Someone would be out with more hot drinks, but not for a while. "Sir, I'm sure Lady Terebithia simply wanted a bit of diversion for the afternoon. It's not as if any of this is legally binding." 

"Did I say I didn't _approve_?" The Count's grin was a little wolfish. Well. He was Terebithia's uncle. They had to have something in common. 

From her self-appointed sentry post Tall Marie announced, "Someone's coming." 

There was; Small Marie could just make out the noise, if she strained, against the soft snowdrifts. Pounding hooves. 

When the blur on the edge of her vision resolved itself into the curl of a swan-sleigh Small Marie wasn't entirely surprised. She folded her hands in a respectful posture of attention as she watched it approach. Terebithia's horse was huge and white, and its pace was an easy trot. A horse enjoying an afternoon outing, not a horse flying over uncertain ground, urged on to heart-rending speed. 

Terebithia pulled up to the gate with a smile on her face and her braids neatly pulled over her shoulders. "Hello, Uncle," she announced. "Has everyone else gone in already?" 

"Don't be absurd, girl. You've won and you know it." The Count stomped out to catch at the traces of her sleigh as if the snow had done him a personal injury. "I won't ask how. What kind of lead did you have when you decided to show off and trot home?" 

"Mmm. I left Jacques behind two miles ago. And poor Baronet Marsanne threw a shoe and was limping to the nearest inn. I don't expect he'll be back tonight." 

Maybe the Count wasn't going to ask how she'd managed it. Small Marie wasn't going to ask, either - it was hardly her place to question Lady Terebithia - but she was going to take a good look at the sleigh. She was going to notice how the tracks it had left in the new-fallen snow looked too shallow even for a delicate confection of a party-sleigh, but how they glistened like melted ice. She was going to notice the odd cylindrical things strapped under the sleigh, painted white to match the rest but clearly metal underneath. She was going to notice how the horse wasn't even breathing hard, which it still should be after a hard gallop, and surely the five stupid young men had been galloping. It would be a wonder if a thrown shoe was the worst that happened to their horses. 

Tall Marie was making a polite bow, the sort she really only managed for the family. "Shall I take your sleigh back to the stables, my lady?" 

"Oh, let's do one better." Terebithia's smile was a little bit terrifying; it made Small Marie's heart pound just to watch it. "Let's all go in and have some coffee made. No need to wait around now there's a winner, don't you think?" 

\--


	4. Start a brawl

## 4\. Start a brawl

The sun beat down. The Pope was droning on and on and Andronicus must have picked _this_ Pope for a reason, the lad had a good head on his shoulders, but Signora Rivoli was unpleasantly reminded of being dragged to the cathedral as a small child to stand in an endless line for wine and bread, by parents no more convinced than she was it would do anything for her immortal soul, but far more convinced of the importance of keeping up appearances. In adulthood the only appearance Rivoli cared to keep up was rich and respectable, emphasis on the rich. Maybe there should have been less emphasis on the rich; the silk of her new justacorps felt impossibly like it was rubbing her neck raw, every time she glanced around. She could feel the sweat trickling down her neck. 

"Get on with it," someone hissed to her left, and someone else tittered, softly, but just high-pitched enough to cut through the rustling and soft breathing. 

That was worth a quick glance. There were a sea of periwigs beside her, but not so thick a sea she couldn't identify a few likely sources. Two unimportant young husbands of important middle-aged noblewomen, the Baroness du Marsanne, and a pinched-face priest she didn't recognize. Hmm. 

"Patience is a virtue," someone else muttered. Male voice, Spanish accent. Alright, that was the pinched-faced priest. Rivoli didn't laugh. There was enough noise in this corner of the plaza already, full of people just important enough to invite but not so important they couldn't be ejected if need be, and she intended to stand through the whole damn coronation and then hang around convincing anyone who stood still long enough they needed to invest in rubber. She was convinced of the possibilities of rubber. She'd seen a Thinkomancer in Rome who had made giant balloons out of the stuff, who'd talked about making them big enough to lift a man. It would have to be a brave man. Rivoli wasn't going to volunteer. But surely there would be more practical uses, once it was fashionable - waterproof cloaks, maybe, belts for machinery that didn't wear so quickly. All fertile ground for a forward-thinking investor. Someday Rivoli meant to be so rich she didn't have to care about respectable. 

But for now, she held her tongue while someone - almost certainly the Baroness - went on, "And greed is a vice, and he's hogging the afternoon. Does the fraud think we all love to listen to him prattle?" 

"Fraud? Are you implying his Holiness didn't have the true election?" 

She should have brought a fan. She could have hidden her smirk behind it, instead of biting her lip. 

A third voice. Deep, careful, someone not brought up to French. "Peace. Not all Popes cannot be the true pope, but all priests may have something worthwhile to impart." 

The priest answered, "That's true. We are all humble seekers after the wisdom of God. Except the Corbettites." 

Oh, this was going to be a glorious mess. They were already getting scandalized glances from the cluster of lace-trimmed ladies just ahead of them, and attracted a few desperate shushing noises, quiet though the argument had been. Rivoli could just about follow the wave of attention across the plaza, from the way periwigs bobbed and stiff new fancy-dress outfits ruffled. She adopted an expression of intense concentration, biting down on the very corners of her mouth to keep from smiling even if it did make her look like she'd bitten into a raw lemon, and rocked gently from foot to foot to keep her feet awake, poised to duck and flee if actual flinging of fans started before Prince Andronicus got the fancy hat on. 

Sure enough, the Baroness, who had cousins on one of the Irelands, snapped back, "And what do you have against the Order of the Devices?" 

"Only that they're a pack of fools! They keep the devices of wizards and _study_ them! There are things man was not meant to know! They blew Castle Merspegard to _pieces_!" 

That was a slander, and if she'd been a hotter-tempered woman Rivoli might have said so. As it was, there were hotter tempers in the room. A grey-haired man in a silver-trimmed doublet turned to the priest and socked him in the jaw. 

"There are things men like you will never know!" he yelled - oh, so that was where the deep voice came from, she wouldn't have thought it out of such a wiry body - and tried to grab the priest by his collar. But one of the women who'd been giving them dirty looks lunged half out of her seat to grab his arm, and he howled in pain instead at whatever she did to it. Was he drunk, that he'd jumped straight to hitting a priest? Or just very, very irritated? 

Well, there was no hope of the thing staying quiet now. The Baroness must have known it; she lifted her walking-cane and brought it down on the intruder's elbow. Up on the stage the Pope had stuttered for barely a word before he continued, in something closer to a shout than a loud noise. 

It was time, Rivoli considered, to get out of here before someone came to drag the brawlers apart. She dropped to her knees. Forget business deals, she wouldn't look very respectable with grass stains all over her skirts, but better stained than arrested. There was a ripple of astonished gasps spreading out through the crowd, and people asking their neighbours what had happened, and everyone was looking over people's shoulders and no one was looking at their knees. Rivoli made it twelve feet crawling before she rose to a crouch, the better to dodge everyone stupid enough to run toward the noise. 

By the time she straightened up again there were guards trying to wade into the fray, but it was a proper fray by now, the kind with as many sides as combatants. Up on stage the Pope had fallen silent. 

Prince Andronicus looked as if he very much wanted to say something, but couldn't come up with angry enough words. His face had gone almost as red as his hair, and his fists were curled in his cloth-of-gold cape, making a crumpled mess of its long smooth drape. He glowered at the crowd. His mouth opened, this closed again. And he had a good head on his shoulders and it would be undignified to scream at his own coronation. 

Rivoli took a deep breath and called out, in the loudest voice she possibly could and the confidence it would echo off the buildings and no one would connect it to a small woman in the anonymous middle of a crowd, "SILENCE!" 

It took three seconds for the babble to start up again, but it had been worth a try. 

\--


	5. Rabbits

## 5\. Rabbits

Martellus threw back his shoulders, patted his collar, and smiled. "Just like I told you. This is important. Do you remember the words?" 

"We remember." Tybalt was beaming. The expression looked a little odd on his human face, but so had every expression since he took Martellus's draught. Martellus was very proud of that draught; it was better than the Heterodynes had ever managed, more controllable and with better results and, best of all, with a ninety-five percent success rate. Poor Scipio - but these things happened, and he'd had a noble funeral. Tybalt tried to adjust his collar and stopped, hands stiff and awkward. "We pledge our allegiance - uh - " 

"To our rightful liege and the true heir of the Lightning Throne, Martellus von Blitzengaard." Martellus laid his hand reassuringly over Tybalt's; it was more important right now that Tybalt _believe_ what he was saying than that he had his collar right, whatever his idiot cousin would say. "You step up, and say the words, and I tap you on both shoulders with the sword. Can you remember that?" 

"'Fcourse I can." Tybalt puffed up his chest. It was, despite everything, the attitude of a dog begging for treats. 

Well. He was a very good dog and he'd agreed to try being a man just because Martellus had asked and he deserved plenty of treats, and there would be a feast with boar afterwards. But that was afterwards. 

The others were lined up, still in sparkhound shape, waiting for Tybalt to finish dressing so they had some idea how to do it - most of them hadn't taken to being human quite so easily. They'd get the hang of it. Martellus finished straightening Tybalt's collar, stepped back and cleared his throat imperiously. "Gentlemen, if you all - " 

They weren't looking at him. Martellus stopped himself, and glanced around the carriage-yard. They were supposed to be loyal, dammit, he'd spent weeks on it. "Gentlemen?" 

Augustus had his snout turned to the sky, sniffing like he'd caught a good scent. Except they weren't on the hunt right now. These were his - just about, in an hour or two - his Knights of the Hunt, the brave volunteers who'd taken his drought and been willing to stand by him as man or beast, not the hesitant pack of Sparkhounds he'd left at Sturmhalten - not to disparage them, they were brave and loyal in their own way, but _they_ were meant to be the bestial ones now and the beasts before him were meant to be - well. His loyal _men_. 

Just in case it helped, Martellus clapped his hands. "What is it, boys?" 

"Rabbit!" Augustus's voice was the kind of high-pitched and eager that he _really shouldn't be_ , not when Martellus had managed to get _Grandmother_ and her husband and even idiot cousin Leopold in one place, and Xantippus, and he'd invited Xantippus on a hunt afterwards and it was going to be the poor fool's last hunt and it wouldn't do to make him suspicious and give him an excuse to run away at the last minute. Augustus yelped, "North wall! Come on!" 

"No! Hold!" Martellus wasn't screaming. It was his job to keep control. These were his Knights of the Hunt and he had to be bold and resolute and this was not going according to plan. 

But their ears were pricked up and their snouts in the air and they were yipping with glee, all pretensions of humanity forgotten. Augustus was the first to break. He'd suffer for it later, Martellus told himself, in the small cold part of his mind that wasn't screaming, "HOLD!" Augustus had already leapt to the top of the woodpile, then another leap to the top of the wall - an ordinary dog couldn't have made it, or an ordinary wolf. It would have made Martellus proud if he weren't so furious. And then Augustus was over the wall and gone, and Leander, and half the pack in a baying horde, fancy clothes and swords abandoned on the ground. There was nothing for it; Martellus pulled out his sword and followed. 

Or, rather, tried to follow. He got as far as halfway up the woodpile before it collapsed beneath his weight. 

It was the armour. It was the damned heavy armour, he really had to some up with something equally lightning-proof that didn't have so many layers to it, it was easy enough to _move_ in but then you did something like try to leap across a stream and fall in, or climb up a badly stacked woodpile and have the kindling roll away under your feet and leave you lying, stunned and with your dignity a wreck, atop a pile of unsplit stumps. 

There was a familiar and tentative noise of, "Awroo?" Someone was breathing hot dog breath in his ear. "Master?" 

"Tybalt?" He pushed himself upright, wincing only a little at the weight on an elbow he knew only throbbed like he'd broken it. "How many are still here?" 

"Six of us," Tybalt answered promptly. At least he had a brain in his head. "But the rabbits smelled really nice and we haven't had a good run in ages, can we go chase them, please?"

He'd - he'd shifted back. His fancy clothes were a mess around the big hairy neck, and his eyes were downright glowing, which had been a deliberate effect which Martellus was starting to regret, and his claws were curled in one of the fallen pieces of wood. Tongue lolling out of his mouth, like he was trying to catch a scent. Which Tybalt presumably was. On either side of him Claude and Nero were on all fours, giving him the kind of look his idiot cousin Tarvek persisted in calling _puppy dog eyes_. 

"No," he growled. "Congratulations. You six actually get knighted today, once we clean up. Then you get boar. The rest of those useless hounds can have rabbit for dinner, if they can catch the bloody things." 

Claude leapt halfway up at that, landing on his hind legs. "Boar! Boar!" 

He hadn't meant it, Martellus decided after a few seconds. He'd lose face, admitting half his Knights of the Hunt wouldn't answer his commands; it wasn't as if Leopold didn't know how many there were. No, but he'd take Ishtvan alone out to round up the others. And if he could he'd get a sample of the damned rabbits, because he had trained his hounds better than that. Really, he had. It was unnatural that they'd leap at a scent like that, and he knew too many people who dabbled in the unnatural to write off the possibility. 

\---

"See? I told you the pheromones would work." Violetta couldn't hold back a smirk.

Tarvek rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm sorry I ever doubted you. It was still a cheap trick." 

"It was _Tweedle_. What more does he deserve?" 

\---


	6. Reveal an old secret

## 6\. Reveal an old secret

"Visitors." 

"Yes." 

"These ceremonies aren't usually open to - " 

"Anyone who might have noticed they involved a Hive Engine?" Xerxsephnia's smile was bright, perfectly innocent. His first mistress would only have been smiling in the sense of showing her teeth now, and it was just as well, Veilchen thought, that she wasn't here right now. Xerxsephnia might actually pull this off without anyone losing blood. Xerxsephnia went on, "Now, if you were one of Korel's fanatics, of course you might have tried to have all the candidates wasped long since - but it would have involved bringing them to the caverns in secret, and someone would have missed them. No. I'm confident our latest graduates will have minds of their own for their whole careers. This is just a formality." 

The smoke knight trainer - Professor something, he liked to be called, but Veilchen was quietly sure the man had never so much as finished his doctorate - stiffened and tried to look more like a terrifying Smoke Knight than a servant getting chewed out for spilling soup. It wasn't easy, faced with Xerxsephnia in a cheerful mood. "Your highness, I appreciate you may have concerns - " 

"Me? Hardly. _Grandma_ has the concerns. I'm just the messenger." 

The not-Professor gave a shaky grin. "Certainly. I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced. Why don't you come take the first-class cabin and we can cast off, this needn't - " 

Xerxsephnia continued as if she hadn't heard, "Well, me, and some minions she borrowed from Auntie Hippolyta." In the shadow of the airship envelope Varpa was visible only by the way her silhouette shuddered as she giggled. It was bad form, but everyone's attention should be on Xerxsephnia right now. Veilchen puffed up his shoulders to loom a little more intimidatingly. "I said they couldn't be trusted, but she said anyone who'd worked for Hippolyta for two weeks without running away had to be loyal. And know their way around exploding things." She blinked. It was the innocent expression of a girl doing her grandmother a favour and meaning nobody any harm by it, and it would work for a few more months before her face grew too sharp to pretend to be anything but the viciously clever princess she was. 

A warm gust of breeze blew across the landing yard. It waggled the not-Professor's bushy grey moustache and the silk hyacinth tucked in Xerxsephnia's crown of braids. 

The man couldn't be accused of grace, or diplomacy, but at least the not-Professor knew when he was beaten. "Yes, Your Highness. How many extra passengers should we weigh in?" 

\--

It had been an uneventful final exam, except for the mysterious fire. But the proctors had declared it a course hazard, in the grand tradition of bosses covering up everywhere, and so the nascent Smoke Knights had avoided it and rolled their eyes in silence. 

Veilchen rolled his eyes openly, but he only did it in front of Xerxsephnia. 

"Let it go," she told him anyway, soft enough not to carry across the clearing. It was the kind of brilliant summer day that made standing around outside, while everyone who'd made it through the caverns and picked up their ceremonial bat-lure got a little speech and a purple cape, just barely comfortable. Veilchen was lurking behind a pine tree. "We took out the hive engine and we didn't have to take out Professor Dubaeur. He'd be hard to replace. Grandma will be pleased." 

"Yes, Your Highness," Veilchen murmured. "Are you sure he shouldn't die anyway? Just to make sure he's not reporting back to Korel?"

"I'm sure. It would be a waste of a good traitor." 

His first lady wouldn't have been so political about it. She would have sent him to discreetly stab every one of Madwa Korel's old friends she could find, and then had their heads put on pikes as a warning. Veilchen was still getting used to Xerxsephnia and her ... subtlety, that was a word for it, hedging her bets and playing to people's expectations. He couldn't decide if he liked it yet. 

But it wasn't his job to like it or not like it, it was his job to do as the Princess told him and only kill people she wanted dead. 

In the centre of the clearing a woman with blond hair in a puffy bob was accepting her cloak, a beaming smile on her face. The not-Professor tapped her shoulder. "Go now, Smoke Knight," he intoned. The woman shimmered and vanished. She was using the Book Two method of vanishing, the kind that worked really well but couldn't be kept up for more than three minutes. Barely time to get back to the airship, at a run. 

Xerxsephnia rolled her eyes. "Veilchen? They're distracted. Go find the mechanics and make sure they do a good job collapsing the cavern. Bring them back by the shortcut, it doesn't matter who sees now. Oh, and Veilchen?" 

"Yes, Your Highness?" 

"Bring me the nameplate. We should have a trophy." 

Maybe they would get along better than he'd thought. 

\--


	7. Find a better one

## 7\. Find a better one

There would be a roaring New Year's party at Grandmother's place in Paris. Nothing to match the big one, the party where the Geisterdamen attacked and the undead Storm King had risen from the streets and the new Master of Paris had had her glorious breakthrough that still makes his heart pound to think about, but a party nonetheless, with dancers and jugglers and one of those fashionable brass bands that seemed determined to make hearing loss equally fashionable. 

Tarvek was not in Paris. Tarvek was in Mechanicsburg, sitting before a roaring methane fire with his feet up, in pink fuzzy slippers, flipping through a copy of Van Grootle's _Meditations on Modern Epistemology_ and mentally composing an insulting letter to the publisher.

He had gotten as far as _If this is the sort of thing you consider worthy of inflicting on the unsuspecting populace of Europa, I would hate to see your reject pile_ before he felt the hand on his collarbone. It was a big hand, putting off heat he could feel even against the radiant glow. He didn't look up. "Hello, Gilgamesh." 

"What are you doing in here? There's a party at Mama's. And the Stopped Clock. And the Gingerbread House. And the Enginewright's Guild Hall." 

_Waiting for you to come get me,_ he didn't say. "That's more for Mechanicsburgers, isn't it? I doubt they'd want me there." 

"Tarvek." And that was Agatha's voice, and he hadn't even heard her come into the room. He's slipping. Starting to think of this place as _safe_. "You're mine, so you belong in Mechanicsburg. Are you going to come along or do you want to stay in this nice ... warm room with a book and a blanket ... " She trailed off, voice going thoughtful. "Although I suppose the cocoa's missing, but we could send for some." 

Tarvek smothered a snicker. "The book's not that nice, my lady. Just let me get my shoes." 

She wouldn't have stayed with him, anyway; she had something to set off at midnight, which she had been infuriatingly mute about. Tarvek was looking forward to it. The Paris fireworks were always a marvel, the finest efforts of whichever lucky artistic Sparks had gotten the year's commission. Agatha's device, however, he would get to examine afterwards. Maybe even rebuild with her. 

Ten minutes later, they ambled towards the Stopped Clock, watching their breath leave clouds in the air. Yesterday's snow was piled in drifts against the eaves. They'd have to turn down the snowblowers before they let them loose again. 

\-- 

Gilgamesh was giving Tarvek a suspicious glance. They'd been matching each other drink for drink, and an unaltered human should have been falling over by now given how many of those drinks had been double lingonberry schnapps. All around them, every Mechanicsburg citizen who could squeeze into the Guild Hall was waving a drink of their own, or trying to balance spanners atop each other - it was some kind of traditional game, apparently - or joining in the rousing chorus of 'My Little Clank Went Clunk' that Agatha had jumped onto a table to lead. They loved her here, and she loved them back. Tarvek, meanwhile, had ducked into the shadow of a spare casting mould to people-watch. He was a little surprised that Gilgamesh followed him. 

All he said, though, was "Don't like singing?" 

"Only when it's in tune," Tarvek lied. 

It made Gilgamesh laugh, at least - not that it took much to do that these days. He was almost as absurd as he'd been in Paris. He knocked his elbow into Tarvek's ribs, just hard enough to knock his breath out. "Right, not the kind of party a stuck-up prince like you is used to, is it? Amateur entertainment and no canapes." Gilgamesh _knew_ there were supposed to be three syllables in that word, Tarvek had heard him pronounce it right before, but this time he only used two. Tarvek didn't dignify the dig with a complaint. "No wonder you were all set to go to bed at eleven." 

"We can't all stay up three nights in a row." 

"Not that that stops you from trying. Remember the reverse-jointed clank?" 

Tarvek rolled his eyes. "It's called _inspiration_ , Gilgamesh. You're a Spark. You know what it's like when you have an idea and you know it's going to get away if you stop long enough for a nap." 

"Sure." 

Gilgamesh must be in a good mood, to make that much of a concession. Well, he was here instead of off running his empire into the ground, and he'd been here nine days with no life-or-death business calling him back, and that was at least worth a toast. Tarvek raised his glass and waited until Gilgamesh, with that little let's-go-for-it grin that had gotten him into so much trouble once upon a time, tapped it with his own. "To inspiration." 

"Cheers," Gilgamesh answered, and they drained the remnants of lingonberry schnapps. It made Tarvek cough going down. He was getting close to tired. Gilgamesh's eyes narrowed. "Are you drunker than you look or is there some secret Smoke Knight trick to making alcohol not work?" 

"How are _you_ not falling over right now? You've had as many as me." 

"I'm used to Theo's. Answer the question, Tarvek." 

"Can't. I would never reveal the secrets of the Yellow Codex to an outsider." 

"Oh, for Bacchus's sake." Violetta's hand shot out with the bottle. Tarvek would never admit it, but it was a delight to watch Gilgamesh twitch when she did that. He'd obviously missed her lurking. Must be drunker than he looked. "Alcohol is a poison. Everybody knows Smoke Knights can't be poisoned." She promptly belied any concern by filling up their glasses again. 

Tarvek beamed. "My dear Violetta! Are you finally admitting I'm not completely useless? I'm touched." 

"We'll see. If you turn useless later on I can drag your rotten carcass back to the Lady Heterodyne." She was wearing her usual practical purple trousers and jacket; no point breaking out the ballgown if she had to be dragging rotten carcasses around, Tarvek supposed. "If not, you still owe me two dances from that time in Wittenburg. I'm claiming one. Not here," she conceded. "My Little Clank is not dancing music." 

Gilgamesh put in, "It is if you're creative. Do I want to know what happened in Wittenburg?" 

"Family politics," Tarvek said, before Violetta could volunteer the details. He'd just as well forget that whole night, except, possibly, the part with the wind-up mimmoths. "You can assume any awful party I mention between when I was eight and the one where the furious corpse-ghost of Andronicus Valois burst through the street was down to family politics. Mechanicsburg parties are only obnoxiously loud, overinebriated, and prone to outbreaks of Jägerkin. I'm sure Tweedle is having a brilliant time." 

He knew even as the words left his mouth he shouldn't have mentioned Tweedle. Violetta giggled, and Gilgamesh narrowed his eyes in that infuriating way that meant he was about to say something insightful and faintly insulting. "Oh? Wishing you were at your grandmother's shindig?" 

"It's in Paris." He waved a hand. "I have the Heterodyne's favour. I don't need to get on an airship all the way to Paris to curry my family's." 

"Good to know you've developed some political sense." Gilgamesh clapped him on the shoulder. "You're both coming on to the Gingerbread House, right? There's supposed to be actual musicians there. Field of Weights Experimental Orchestra. I'm sure it will be ..." 

"Loud?" Violetta proposed, and took a drink from the bottle. 

Tarvek rolled his eyes. "Metallic," he muttered. "I saw them at the Harvest Festival. But yes, we'll come with you. Will you promise me a dance once Violetta gets hers?" 

He didn't know why he'd said that. 

No, he knew full well why he'd said it; it was to watch Gilgamesh snicker as if it had been a joke. "If you like. Not going for Agatha this time?" 

"It's almost eleven. I'm sure she'll find time to dance with both of us next year." He put just enough emphasis on _dance_ to make an innuendo out of it, and watch Gilgamesh blush. "Very early next year." 

"Right. After the - did she tell you what she was going to do for the midnight gong?" 

Tarvek shook his head. They both looked over at Violetta. She smirked at them over - Tarvek's glass, and when had she grabbed it? Maybe he was slipping. "It's a surprise, she said - " 

The BANG was, Tarvek realised in retrospect, at the end of a chorus. At the kind of parties he used to go to it would have been his cue to dive behind the nearest heavy piece of furniture. He hadn't actually been present at Xerxsephnia's fourth birthday, but he'd heard Tweedle complain a few times about how _graceless_ and _wasteful_ the attempt had been. But this was Mechanicsburg, so he stuck his head out from behind the spare casting mould while Violetta rolled her eyes and Gil protected his drink from falling dust by chugging the whole thing. 

Agatha was still on top the table, but the massive paper-mache mimmoth that had been there with her was gone, scattered into brown scraps across the room and a good number of people's heads. In its place was a massive pile of foil-wrapped chocolate coins, the good kind, he could just tell if he squinted, with the moulded trilobite and the eight-centimetre diameter. She was beaming. Small children were scrambling onto the table to grab the coins. Cheers rung out. 

And it wasn't even midnight yet. 

Tarvek reached back to grab Gil by the hand and drag him out. It really was a _big_ pile of chocolate, after all, and there was no reason to turn down dessert. 

\-- 


End file.
